An interesting thing happened in my latest game. In the first year of my empire, my explorer ship discovered an abandoned capital ship. It was named Aggressor of Usatemu, and it had very advanced components among which included fighter bays. But checking how many fighters were available on board, none were present.

I was just at the beginning level of the Weapons branch of research in my empire, of which fighter bays had not been research yet. As soon as I researched that fighter tech, fighters appeared on the captured capital ship. While other advanced components on that ship were not research yet for my empire, but operated correctly, the fighter bay did not.

I don't know if others have experience this, but could you look into this oversight?

I see what you are saying StarLab, but I don't believe it should work this way. This abandoned capital ship left there by an advanced race with advanced weapons beyond my empire's level, should have fighters and bombers working on board. I think it was an oversight in the code and this was left out by mistake. That's just the way I see it and I hope Elliot can take a look at this when he has some time.

The ship was obviously part of the war with the original Shakturi. So we can assume that it at some point fought and all of its fighters were destroyed. Since your empire had not yet researched fighters you did not have pilots capable of flying star fighters and because of this your crew saw no reason to build them.